DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION

What is DEI?

The growth of diversity in the United States is a well-known, much discussed, and established fact. The same is true about the fact that the driver behind this increasing diversity is a dramatic growth of the Latinx population of the United States. In the book Diversity Explosion (2018), William H. Frey clearly details this reality and discusses its possible implications, stating that “in about three decades, whites will constitute a minority of all Americans”.

However, diversity is not something that is projected to happen in the future: it is already here.

53.8% of the student population in United States school districts is already nonwhite

4 states are already majority minority (Hawaii, California, New Mexico, and Texas), soon to be joined by 2 more (Nevada and Maryland)

67 million Americans (21.9%) speak a language other than English at home: 61% of them speak Spanish, 16.2% of them speak Asian and other Pacific Island languages

39% of Spanish speakers speak English “less than very well” as well as 44.7% of Asian/Pacific Island language speakers

14% of all United States residents are foreign born

Although true and important, these general statistics do not fully indicate the nuances and complexities of diversity in the United States. We need to consider many other elements:

There are generational differences within each racial and national origin group.
Significant differences exist in the national origin of these groups, including:
Latinx come from 23 different national origins
The census lists over 80 Asian and Pacific Island languages
“Black” or “African American” usually includes people with different cultural experiences such as the English or French speaking Caribbean and African countries such as Ethiopia
The category “White Non-Hispanic” includes national groups of recent migration, such as Russian, with very diverse cultural experiences
The migration experiences are very diverse: from that of a Puerto Rican who is a US citizen to an undocumented migrant.
Other factors such as gender permeate all these groups and manifest themselves differently in the diverse cultural contexts.

All these factors and many others provide the various cultural contexts that color the picture of diversity that is already true in the United States. Within this context, inclusion will happen one way or another for all organizations that continue to develop in this diverse environment. The question becomes how will it happen: Will the organization resist and be overrun by its diverse environmental reality? Will the organization fail to recognize and be unprepared or struggle to react and keep up with a changing reality? Or will the organization proactively seek to include and maximize the value added and opportunities that a diverse environment brings?

Organizations that do not devise inclusion strategies in an increasingly diverse environment will face important challenges in their development. They will find it more difficult to find, hire, and retain capable human resources as the labor force becomes all the time more diverse. These organizations will also find it more and more difficult to successfully meet their mission and goals. They would be providing products and services that do not meet the needs of their clients, who will seek to satisfy those needs elsewhere.

Inclusion strategies that recognize and bring differences into the organization are not enough, however. These differences must be understood and internalized, so they become part of the organization’s culture and its interaction with the environment. Real differences understood is the recognition that there are equally valid but different paths toward internal and external goals. These paths must reflect the diversity of cultural contexts from which they depart. Effective inclusion in a diverse environment must include equity. Inclusion without equity will be short lived, as employees tire of lip service to diversity that does not provide real possibilities for advancement that respects their differences. Inclusion without equity will eventually drive clients elsewhere, as they realize the organization is providing the same services, just repackaged to be cosmetically more attractive to their cultural context.

Equity is more than becoming conscious of a diverse environment and its expediency as a strategic response. It is also a matter of fairness. Fairness that comes from the development of a multicultural identity that can recognize and integrate diverse cultural contexts that require different paths to success.

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